Follow the Image

JOY GARNETT STUDIED PAINTING AT L’ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS IN PARIS AND COMPLETED HER MFA AT THE CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK. HER THIRD SOLO EXHIBITION, “RIOT,” OPENED AT DEBS & CO., NEW YORK IN JANUARY 2004, AND PRESENTED NEW PAINTINGS BASED ON NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS OF FIGURES IN STATES OF EMOTIONAL OR PHYSICAL EXTREMITY. SHE IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A PROJECT ABOUT WAR AND GLOBAL NOMADISM CALLED “LOST HIGHWAY.”

New York artist Joy Garnett outlines her methods as a painter who works from sampled or found images. She discusses her relationship to her sources, which have included science photographs, declassified military and news media imagery. She describes the challenges she has encountered while working with different types of source material: from technical obstacles (invisible phenomena that require lenses and other optical devices) to socio-political mediation (government secrecy and the search for declassified imagery), to legal encumbrances (accusations of “piracy” and copyright infringement regarding a sampled image). Garnett explains her sense of the continued relevance and critical potential of art in light of these challenges, specifically the uses of painting in an age of mass production and digital technology.